“And then he could shoot?”

  Mason nodded. “That’s generally the law of self-defense. There are a lot of various qualifications about the man’s duty to retreat and about who provoked the conflict in the first place. But that’s the general rule.”

  “Now, then,” she said, “suppose you knew that a cold-blooded, deliberate, efficient killer was on your trail and was going to commit murder. Wouldn’t you have the right to kill him first?”

  “Under the circumstances I’ve mentioned,” Mason said.

  “I know,” she said, “but suppose you knew a man was out to kill you. Suppose he was watching your place, sitting in a car, a machine gun in his lap, and you managed to sneak out of your back door without his knowing it. Couldn’t you take a rifle and blow the top of his head off without being guilty of murder?”

  Mason shook his head.

  “Why not?”

  “Because under those circumstances,” Mason said, “you’d have had a chance to call up the police and ask for protection.”

  She laughed scornfully. “Trying to get police protection from a man like the one I’m talking about is like asking the police to protect you against smallpox or the bubonic plague … Why, the man would simply slip through the fingers of the police like nothing at all and you’d be dead before morning.”

  “You asked me to tell you what the law was. I’ve told you. I don’t make the law, I study it.”

  She said, “That’s exactly the same thing Morris told me, but I wouldn’t believe him. It doesn’t sound fair to me, but that’s what he said the law was, and so he said that you wouldn’t approve of what he’s doing.”

  “What is he doing?”

  “Ever hear of George Fayette?”

  “Why, do you know him? I’d like to find out something about him.”

  She laughed bitterly. “Lots of people would like to find out something about him. He’s a killer.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason invited.

  “And right at the moment he’s trying to kill Morris and me.”

  “Why?”

  “That’s one of the things I’d like to know. I presume because I’m Tom Sedgwick’s girl friend.”

  “And who is Tom Sedgwick?”

  “He’s someone the police are looking for. They’re trying to frame a murder on him.”

  “So they want to kill you and Morris Alburg?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why? That doesn’t make much sense.”

  “You act as though you didn’t believe me.”

  “I’m not certain that I do.”

  “Listen, you can’t argue with facts. Fayette tried to have me killed there in that alley back of Mr. Alburg’s restaurant.”

  “Just what happened then?” Mason asked.

  She said, “Fayette was on my trail, intending to kill me. He came walking into that restaurant with just one thought in mind, and that was to frighten me into running out into the back alley.

  “If I’d had one lick of sense I’d have known that was exactly what he wanted. Even a man with Fayette’s pull and brass could hardly expect to shoot a woman down in a public restaurant and then just get up and walk out of there.

  “And yet he’s done things that have been just as crazy as that—and got away with them, too. But somehow you don’t stop to think when you see George Fayette looking at you. It’s like reaching up to put your hand on a rock and finding a rattlesnake coiled there.”

  “Go ahead,” Mason said as she stopped. “I’d like to know exactly what happened.”

  She said, “I dashed out of that restaurant, and that’s exactly what Fayette wanted. He had an accomplice in a car waiting for me.

  “All Fayette had to do was to sit tight and appear to be innocently enjoying his dinner, and I’d rush right into the jaws of his trap.”

  “And just what did happen when you reached the alley?”

  “Well, the accomplice tried to force me to get into the car with him. I was just too plain panic-stricken to co-operate. And I guess that upset everyone’s plans. It had never occurred to anyone that I wouldn’t fold up like an accordion and march right into that car like a good little girl.

  “As it was, I did the unexpected. I started to run.

  “By the time the man managed to take a shot at me I was out of the line of fire through the open door. He stepped on the throttle to catch up with me, and the lurch of the car jerked the door back so it closed. He fired again, and the bullet went clean through the car door.

  “By that time I was just running in blind panic. I dashed out into the street, and right in front of an oncoming car.

  “Well, that’s virtually the entire story. I regained consciousness in a hospital, and I knew, of course, that where I was would be a matter of public record, and Fayette could find me without any trouble. So I got up and explored the private room in which I’d been placed. I found my clothes in the closet. I was pretty wobbly on my pins, but I dressed and got out of there. Of course I got in touch with Morris at once.”

  “And what did Morris do?”

  “He fixed me up with an outfit and gave me a chance to hide…. But, of course, Morris was pretty much upset because he realized Fayette was after him at the same time.”

  “So Alburg is taking steps to remove Fayette?”

  “I probably shouldn’t have told you that. In fact, I’m not going to tell you that. I’m simply telling you that right at the moment Morris is busy on a matter of the greatest importance and he isn’t going to have any opportunity to get in touch with you until—well, I’d say for three or four hours at the most, but he’s written you this note so that you’ll understand.”

  “All right,” Mason said, “what do you want me to do?”

  “That’s rather difficult to say. You’re not very cooperative. You’re still suspicious.”

  “Do you blame me for that?”

  “Yes.”

  Mason laughed.

  “Morris—Mr. Alburg wrote you a note, didn’t he?”

  “No.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “The signature is a scrawl. I’m not at all certain it’s his. I’m not familiar with his signature.”

  “It’s his. I saw him sign it.”

  “It’s just a scrawl.”

  “He was in a hurry. He had things on his mind.”

  “The note is typewritten. He could have written it in his own hand a lot easier than tapping it out on a typewriter and it would have been a lot faster.”

  “How do you know? Perhaps he writes faster on a typewriter than with pen and ink.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Mason said. “Whoever typed this note tapped it out laboriously with two fingers.”

  “Perhaps Mr. Alburg was in a position where he couldn’t write. He might have been hiding somewhere. He told someone what he wanted to say to you and that someone typed out the note and took it to Mr. Alburg to sign.”

  “Or perhaps scrawled her own version of Alburg’s signature on it,” Mason said.

  “Oh, you lawyers, with your everlasting suspicions! You make me sick.”

  “I’m sorry. I can’t successfully represent Morris Alburg until I know a lot more about you than I do now. Do you happen to have a driver’s license with you?”

  “No. Mr. Alburg specifically identifies me in this letter.”

  “But there’s no one to identify the letter.”

  “Oh, nuts! I told Morris I’d bet you’d be like that. So I suppose you’ve got to see Morris face to face and have him tell you I’m Dixie Dayton and that you’re to represent me, and show you the birthmark on my left hip and then give you a banker’s guarantee…. Oh, all right, I’ll go get Mr. Alburg and bring him here—and it’s going to be dangerous.

  “If he doesn’t get Fayette first, George Fayette is going to kill him. And a fat lot you care! You with your lawyer’s skepticism. If your client gets killed trying to come here to identify me, you’ll know who’s to blame.

  “All right, wait right here.”

  “And if you should see Morris Alburg,” Mason said, “tell him to come to me at once before he tries to deal with Fayette or with anyone else. Tell him I’ll be waiting here and that I’ll tell him how to handle the situation.”

  She was standing at the door, one hand on the knob, looking at him over her shoulder, her eyes dark with emotion.

  “So that’s what you want,” she said scornfully. “Darned if I’m not sorry I opened up and talked to you the way I did. I thought you were a shrewd criminal lawyer who knew his way around. You talk like a reformer. I might as well write to Prudence Penny and say, ‘My dear Miss Penny: What shall I do? There is a gunman who wants to kill me. He’s almost succeeded twice in the last twenty-four hours, and now I know where I can put my finger on him. What should I do?’

  “And instead of saying ‘rub the guy out,’ Prudence Penny would say, ‘My dear Miss Whosis: You must remember that we have laws to take care of people of that sort. You should consult the authorities at once and tell them about your danger. They’ll know what to do.’

  “Perry Mason,” she went on scornfully, “the great lawyer—Prudence Penny. Why the hell don’t you get one of those encyclopedias on etiquette and a Gideon Bible, and throw your law books out the window?”

  She slammed the door behind her so hard that the mirror which was hanging over the washbowl jumped and started to vibrate.

  Perry Mason sat perfectly still, his eyes on his wrist watch, wondering if Paul Drake had had time to get his operatives placed, and whether they would be successful in following the girl.

  Chapter 7

  Mason once more paced the floor of the hotel bedroom, plainly showing impatience.

  He had only a few minutes to wait.

  Exactly seven minutes and five seconds from the time the door had closed on the departing figure of the young woman, fingertips tapped gently on the panel of the door, an all but inaudible knock.

  Mason detoured in his floor-pacing to twist the knob and pull the door open.

  Paul Drake, somewhat disheveled, in need of a shave, grinned at Mason and said in a low voice, “Okay, Perry.”

  Mason said, “Did you get …?” He ceased talking as Drake placed a warning finger to his lips and pushed his way into the room.

  “What gives?” Mason asked in a low voice.

  “She’s still here in the hotel,” Drake said.

  “You got on the job yourself?”

  “I had to, Perry, I couldn’t get the people here in time, and I jumped into my clothes and beat it up here as fast as I could. At that, I didn’t do you any good.”

  “How come?”

  “The girl who handles my switchboard was planted in the corridor. She had to register and get a room in order to do the job we wanted. She put on a maid’s cap and an apron and was out in the corridor when your girl came out. In place of taking the elevator down to the lobby, however, the way we had expected, this jane took the elevator up.”

  “Oh-oh,” Mason said.

  “Now there is only one floor above this,” Drake said, “so my operative felt she could take the stairs and not be too far behind. Of course, she’d figured the lay of the land the first thing she did and before the action started, so she knew her way around.”

  Mason nodded.

  “She sprinted up the stairs, opened the door and was only a second or two behind the elevator. Your girl was walking down the corridor. She stopped in front of 815, took a key from her purse, opened the door and walked in. My operative ran on tiptoe down the corridor and was in time to hear the door being locked from the inside.”

  “So then what?”

  “So then she listened at the door long enough to hear low voices, one of them a man’s voice. Evidently that jane is registered there in room 815. We had no signals to cover that emergency, so my operative had to dash down to where I was sitting in my car to tell me what had happened and ask for instructions. I felt the hotel room was all the address you needed and I couldn’t leave my office switchboard shut off any longer, so I sent my girl back to the office and I came up to report. I stopped by the desk long enough to find out that room 815 is rented to a Mrs. Madison Kerby.”

  “The clerk suspicious of you?” Mason asked.

  “The hell with him,” Drake said. “This is one of those dumps. If he’d said anything I’d have told him where he got off at. I presume they’re more or less accustomed to having private detectives crawling over the place.”

  “You mean he knows you’re a private detective?”

  “Hell, no. I let him think I was on the make. I slipped him a couple of bucks. Frankly, Perry, I don’t think he gave a damn.”

  “So she’s here in the hotel,” Mason said.

  Drake nodded. “It both complicates and simplifies things, Perry. As I tried to point out to you, we’re short-handed. I’d instructed my operative to put the finger on the jane who came out of this room and to signal me so I could …”

  “How was she going to do that, Paul?”

  “Simple enough. My operative registered and insisted on getting a room at the front of the building. As soon as your party took the elevator down my operative was going to run into her room, open the window and shine the beam of a flashlight down on my car. I had my rear-view side mirror so adjusted that as soon as the beam of the flashlight hit that it would be reflected in my eyes.”

  “Nice going,” Mason said.

  “Just routine,” Drake told him, and yawned.

  “Well, we’ve run our quarry to earth,” Mason said.

  “She’s Dixie …”

  Mason grinned. “She said she was Dixie.”

  “Well?” Drake asked.

  Mason shook his head.

  “What are you getting at?”

  Mason pulled a handkerchief from his pocket, said “Here are three stains of lipstick marked numbers one, two and three. What do you make of them, Paul?”

  “You must have had a busy night,” Drake said.

  “Never mind the wisecracks. What do you make of this lipstick? It is all the same?”

  “Two of them are the same. One might be just a little lighter than the other. I’d say—no, wait a minute—they’re all the same. I’d say they were all the same shade.”

  “So would I,” Mason said.

  “You mean you’ve been necking with three different gals?” Drake asked.

  Mason pulled the lipstick from his pocket, said, “Smear number one was removed from the lips of the girl who claims to be Dixie Dayton. Smear number two was taken from the writing on the bottom of the table here, and smear number three was taken from this lipstick.”

  “Writing on the bottom of the table?” Drake said.

  “Uh-huh.”

  Mason picked the table up, gently turned it over, and Paul Drake looked at the writing on the bottom of the table and whistled, then said, “How the devil did you happen to find it there, Perry?”

  “ ‘Elementary, my dear Watson,’ ” Mason said, grinning. “This lipstick was lying on the floor. You notice it’s a gold-plated tube of lipstick. It caught and reflected the light. Only a blind man could have missed it.”

  “All right,” Drake said, “I still don’t see how it happened that you looked at the bottom of the table.”

  “Take a look at this lipstick,” Mason said. “A woman’s lips are smooth. This lipstick was drawn across something rough which grooved deep lines in it and made it overlap the edges.

  “So naturally I started looking around to see what the lipstick had been used on besides a person’s lips.”

  “And you found this table,” Drake said.

  Mason nodded.

  “Now wait a minute,” Drake said, “this may be on the level, Perry. You were supposed to meet Morris Alburg here?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And—What the hell, Alburg and some woman, perhaps Dixie Dayton, were here in this room. Somebody slipped in and had a gun trained on them, and …”

  “You’ll notice the imprint of the gun on the bedspread,” Mason said. “It’s quite plain.”

  Drake followed the direction of Mason’s finger and said, “Damned if it isn’t, Perry…. My gosh, that does it! That really ties the thing up! They sat here. They knew they were going to be taken for a ride. They wanted to leave you some message. They had no chance to do it, but the girl acted as if she wanted to look her best when she was bumped off, so she opened her bag, took out her lipstick and started messing around with it. It was all very natural and no one noticed her when she surreptitiously scribbled this message. She was afraid you’d never find it in time to do any good, so she dropped her lipstick on the floor, feeling certain you’d see that. Then they prodded her with the gun, and told her it was time to go.”

  “Sounds logical all right,” Mason said without enthusiasm.

  “Gosh,” Drake told him, “I can’t understand why you’re so calm about it, Perry. Jeepers, let’s go to work on this thing. Let’s start figuring this message. Let’s— What do you think? Think we’d better get the police?”

  “I think so.”

  Drake looked at him and said, “You’re the damnedest guy I ever saw. At times you get all worked up over something and want me up out of bed at three o’clock in the morning, then you fool around and take something like this in your stride and don’t seem to be in a hurry about it. Those folks are in danger. Whether we find them alive or dead depends on how long it takes us to decipher that message and bring help to them.”

  “Could be,” Mason said.

  “What the hell’s wrong?” Drake asked.

  “This message,” Mason said, “is supposed to have been written surreptitiously on the underside of the table by some woman who was playing around with her lipstick, and managing, whenever the attention of her captors was distracted, to write something on the bottom of the table. Is that the idea?”

  “Well, that certainly is the way it looks to me,” Drake said.

  Mason took a notebook from his pocket, put it on his knee and said, “Now, this represents the top of a table. Take a pencil and write the word ‘help’ on there.”